The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo (15 page)

He leant forward now, infusing his body with urgency.

‘Those women have no choice! Their only choice is prostitution or to go hungry—or to see their children hungry! They are driven to it by desperation!’

His expression changed. Hardened like steel.

‘Madeline Walters never experienced anything like that! She was never going to starve in the gutter! Never going to go to bed hungry! She took to prostitution because it was easy money! That’s all! She mocked me because I’d worked hard and long for what I’d saved! Mocked me for working non-stop at back-breaking work in bloody awful conditions when she could earn a thousand pounds a night on her back in a luxury hotel room! She
chose
to sell her body for sex! She
wanted
to do it! She wanted to make money fast—any way she could! And she wasn’t fussy about how she did it!
That’s
why I despise her. Condemn her. And I would condemn
any
woman who made the same choice—chasing easy money by whoring herself out!’

He fell silent. Celeste hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. Then, with a little jerk, she lifted her mug to her lips and took a mouthful. The tea was too hot still, and scalded her mouth. But she did not feel the pain.

There was too much in the rest of her body.

Consuming her.

Slowly, she set aside her mug. Slowly, she got to her feet. Slowly, she looked back to Rafael. The time had come. The moment was here. The moment when she destroyed the happiness she had so briefly glimpsed.

I thought I was free to be happy! But I can never be free—never!

The slicing knives cut into her heart—her soul. Because the past had not gone. It had never gone. Could never be gone. It had become the very future that was now rushing in on her, forcing her throat to work, her words to be shaped, her mouth to open and her voice to sound.

Any woman,
he had said... He would condemn and despise any woman.

Say it—say what you must! What you cannot keep silent on any longer!

She had thought she could keep silent. Thought she could silence the past—silence all that she had done. But to do so now was impossible.

She made herself speak. Forced herself.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she said. Her voice was as thin as a reed.

He was looking at her. Such a short distance away, but separated from her by a gulf so large it could never be bridged. Into her mind came a memory—a memory of standing on the lawns at that Oxfordshire mansion, gazing at the Milky Way. Of Rafael coming to her, telling her about the Chinese legend of lovers separated on either side of the galaxy.

It was us all along...those lovers parted by an ocean of stars.

Pain pierced her as the knives in her heart sliced again.

His face had changed expression. There was concern in it again, tenderness. The pain came again.

‘I’ve upset you,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry. I know it must be difficult for you—painful, even—to hear about women like Madeline. Women who
choose
to exploit their sexuality as she did! To use it to make money.’ His mouth twisted in angry contempt. ‘Easy money.’

He took a breath, his eyes holding hers.

‘Celeste, I know you’ve had some trauma in your past. Some ugly experience that traumatised you—made you lock yourself away in a prison of celibacy because of what had been done to you! I’ve never asked—never probed. But I saw how you reacted to Karl Reiner when he said those foul words to you—and how you reacted to what he was intending for Louise. I’ve always thought that you must have been through something similar—and that there was no one to save you from it! So I can understand—I truly can—how distressing it must be to you when someone like Madeline flaunts what she’s done and makes a calculated decision to use the likes of Karl Reiner for commercial gain. I
know,
’ he said, and his voice was resonant, ‘that whatever happened to you, you never intended it to happen! You never
chose
it! You are nothing,
nothing
like Madeline!’

A sound came from her. A sound like something breaking. Her face was stretched like brittle plastic over steel mesh beneath. Her eyes seared him to the bone. Her voice tore like talons.

‘I am
exactly
like Madeline!’

He surged to his feet. ‘You are
nothing
like her! How can you say that? You
saw
how Karl Reiner was getting Louise drunk, drugged—whatever it would take to get her into bed with him without her realising it was happening!’

A hand slashed in front of him. ‘I am
not
Louise! Don’t think of me as her, or anything like her! I knew
exactly
what I was doing! And I knew
exactly
how much money I was being paid for it!’ Her eyes were slitted like a snake’s. ‘Because fixing a price for sex is the first and most important thing
any
prostitute does!’

* * *

He froze. His brain froze. Stopped working completely. He just stood there, immobile.

She was not, though. She was swaying, very slightly, and there was a look on her face that was entirely and totally blank. As though she were no longer inside her body.

Yet her voice was still speaking. He could hear it coming from a long way away. An endless distance.

‘So now you know,’ she was saying. ‘I am exactly like Madeline. I made the same choice as she did. I wanted money—fast. And I did what she did.’

There was silence. An agonising silence that stretched for eternity. Then into the silence Rafael spoke.

‘I don’t believe you.’ His voice was flat. His denial absolute.

She rounded on him. ‘Believe it!
Believe
it, Rafael, because that’s what it was! Prostitution! Nothing else—just that. Sex for money.’

‘No—’ There was horror in his voice.

‘
Yes!
It was prostitution—exactly that!’ Bitterness and self-accusation scored her words. ‘Oh, I tried to tell myself it wasn’t—but it was! It
was.
’ She took a ravaged, heaving breath, making herself remember—making herself tell him what she had to tell him. What he had to know.

Her voice changed. Stretched thin, as if a wire was garrotting her.

‘I’d only just started modelling, and there’s very little money in it to begin with. It came as a shock, because I’d assumed—like so many other teenagers—that once I’d been scouted I’d be swanning around in luxury like a supermodel from then on. The reality was different.’ She paused, swallowed. ‘Sometimes we didn’t even get paid—not in money, just in clothes from the collection we’d modelled. So I was...short of money.’

Her voice was flat now, with no emotion.

‘But money was what I wanted. Badly. So—I made a decision. I found a way to make...easy money.’

She took a breath, like a razor in her throat. Her eyes were dead now—quite, quite dead.

She cast those eyes at Rafael, not seeing him, seeing only the past, seeing the choice she had made, the decision she had taken.

‘Have you ever heard of something called “summer brides”?’ she asked, her voice as dead and as expressionless as her eyes. She paused, her eyes still resting on Rafael.

Did he shake his head? He didn’t know. He knew only that something was gripping his entrails, his heart, like pliers.

She went on in that calm, dead voice. ‘They are quite common in the Middle East. In some places local culture bans all sexual contact between men and women outside marriage. So what they do...wealthy men...is buy themselves a bride. A summer bride. Temporary. Just to provide them with what they want.’ Her voice was emptied now of all expression. ‘They pay her a bride price. Enough to...to compensate her for the fact that the marriage won’t last more than a few weeks at the most. That once the man has...finished with her she’ll be...discarded.’

She was silent a moment. Her eyes slid past him, looking into a place that was very far away and yet as close to her as the agonising synapses in her memory. Then she went on, in the same expressionless voice.

‘I got a modelling assignment out in the Middle East—an oil-rich city in the Gulf, where a new fashion mall was opening. They were doing publicity shots using European girls, especially blondes like me. It was good money for modelling at my level then, but it still wasn’t as much as I wanted. So when one of the photographers’ assistants asked me if I was interested in earning more money—a lot more—I said yes. He explained to me the custom in that part of the world. Said that as a “summer bride” I could make a lot of money—fast. That as a blonde I’d be at a premium...my bride price would be high.’

She looked at Rafael again, not seeing him, only letting her gaze rest somewhere in the desert that was the place where she was now.

Her voice changed. Twisted in her throat.

‘He called it a bride price but I knew what it was. I knew what a summer bride was. I
knew
it. Knew what it would be called here in the West.’ And now her eyes did see Rafael’s face. Saw every stricken feature. ‘Prostitution. What else? What else is it when a girl is given money in exchange for sex with a stranger? I was given money—a lot of money. And I know what that made me.’ She paused. Swallowed. ‘What it
makes
me...’

She met his eyes, forced herself to do so. They were blank. Blank with shock. With more than shock.

‘There are no excuses for me. I wasn’t tricked, or forced, or fooled. I knew what I was doing and I did it. Because I wanted to. Just like Madeline I
chose
to make easy money, fast.
Just like Madeline.
’

She closed her eyes a moment. Then opened them again.

‘So now you know why I left New York that afternoon. And why what we had is over.’

A shudder seemed to go through her, as if something were shattering deep inside. Her voice changed.

‘Rafael, I lied about myself by not telling you. I deceived you. Because I wanted you so, so much, I told myself that I could finally leave it behind me—ignore that it had ever happened—accept from you what I had come to feel I could never accept from a man. A normal, honest relationship! But when you told me about Madeline, how you despised and condemned her for what she did—what she chose to do—then I knew that all my hopes had been lies! I knew...
know...
that I can never escape the past, never put my past behind me! That by hiding it from you I’ve been lying to you right from the start! And when I saw the revulsion in your face as you told me about Madeline, I knew—’ her voice choked ‘—knew that I could deceive you no longer. I could not look at you and know that you would condemn any woman who made a choice like hers. A woman like Madeline. A woman...’ the breath razored her lungs ‘...like me.’

She paused, shutting her eyes for a moment, then forcing them open again in order to say what she still must.

‘So I left. And now,’ she said, swallowing, lowering her voice, ‘you must leave, too. I am sorry—truly sorry, more sorry than you can ever know—that I have treated you so badly, both in my deception, my silence about what I did, and in the anxiety you have felt these past days, not knowing where I was.’

He was still standing there, frozen into immobility. She drew breath and went on. She had to do this right to the bitter, nightmare end.

‘I would tell you, Rafael, that my time with you has been the most precious time of my life—I would tell you that, but for you I have destroyed it all by telling you the truth about myself, about what I’ve done. But it remains true, for all that, and to my dying day, each and every moment of my time with you will be a jewel in my memory.’

Her voice was breaking.
She
was breaking. She could speak no longer.

She saw him start, saw his face work. Then he spoke.

‘How old were you?’ His voice was stark.

She looked away again, then back at him. ‘I was seventeen. Over the age of consent. And I consented to what I did. No one forced me or tricked me!’

‘You were little more than a child!’ Anger bit in his voice. ‘You were shamelessly taken advantage of! You had no idea what you were doing!’

Anger flashed in Celeste’s eyes in retaliation. ‘Rafael, my age is irrelevant! Of
course
I knew what it was I was doing—I was having sex with a stranger for money! I prostituted myself! And calling myself his “summer bride” didn’t stop it being that! I told you—I wanted money fast, a lot of it, and I got it. I got what I wanted! Just like Madeline did!’

‘I absolutely refuse to compare you to her!’

‘Well, you must! I’m sorry—I’m desperately, desperately sorry to inflict this on you, but—’

He cut across her. ‘Are you?
Are
you sorry?’ He seized on her words, silencing her.

She looked at him. ‘Of
course
I’m sorry for doing this to you—’

He cut across her again. ‘But are you sorry for doing this to
you?
Now, with your adult eyes, surely to God you bitterly regret what you did? Because Madeline doesn’t! Madeline does not think she did anything at all to regret! But do
you?
Do you regret it, Celeste? Do you look back now and wish you had not done it? Do you regret what you did?’

Every word was loaded. Every word carried a weight he could hardly bear. Her answer would tell him everything he had to know.

Everything he had to hope.

She looked at him. Looked at him with eyes that saw his pain.

And then she inflicted more. The killing blow.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t. I don’t regret it. It got me what I wanted. Easy money. Fast.’ She paused a fraction of a second. ‘So you see I am just like Madeline...’

For one long, last moment he looked at her. Into the space between them went everything that he had once held so dear.

Then, without a word, he turned and left.

* * *

The night sky was cloudy, with rain threatening. No stars were visible. He walked. He walked without stopping, without pausing. Somewhere behind him his car was trailing him, his driver probably thinking him mad, but he could not think about that now. He could not think about anything.